Should California ‘Just Say No’ to the War on Drugs?

Maureen Martin passed away in February 2013. She was a long-time senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute. Formerly a newspaper reporter, she became an attorney and has practiced law for nearly 30 years, generally concentrating in litigation and environmental law. She was an adjunct professor of environmental law at Loyola University Chicago for more than 10 years. Her op-eds were published in the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, the Washington Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune, among other outlets.Her favorite lawyer joke: “What’s the difference between a carp and a lawyer?” Answer: “One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder; the other’s just a fish.”

The United States Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that California must release about 46,000 of the 156,000 inmates in its prison system or find other ways to relieve prison overcrowding. (Read a PDF of the ruling here.) Releasing those imprisoned for drug offenses would go a long way toward meeting this quota.

According to Jacob Sullum, blogging at Reason’s Hit & Run, there are nearly 25,000 drug offenders in the prisons now. Of these, 8,587 are in for simple possession of a controlled substance and 1,401 for marijuana-related offenses. He cites information gathered by the California chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which analyzes a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation prisoner census, linked at Sullum’s blog.